Birdie rejected the half-formulated offer of safe conduct to more salubrious surroundings with a shake of the head and a brave smile. “My job, duckie,” she said carelessly, patting his extended hand.
Sir Arthur sat down again. Plucky girl, he told himself, then settled, not entirely without pleasurable anticipation, to resume his watching brief.
What followed in the next ten minutes or so was to impress indelibly upon the minds of everyone present (Mr Suflri, possibly, excepted) associations so bizarre and powerful that none was able ever again to glimpse a loop of rope, let alone a telescope or an anchor, without suffering a brief attack of breathlessness.
The culmination of these extraordinary events coincided with the end of the reel. Becket called for lights. There was much blinking, stretching and puffing of cheeks.
“Christ!” somebody commented.
“Well, I neverkins!” added Birdie, wide-eyed.
“I should hope not either,” murmured Queen’s Counsel. By force of habit, he looked about him for a brief, then, having failed to find one, stared sternly at Grail and shook his head.
Grail was pale with shock and anger. Ignoring Sir Arthur, he sought and confronted Robin Marr-Newton.
Robin had every appearance of being pleased with himself. He grinned at Clive in the manner of a car salesman after an impressive test drive.
“Well, squire? How’s that for starters? I must say there’s some unexpected talent in the rural outback of the old country.”
“You bloody, half-baked, misbegotten...”
Grail’s mouth made a few more movements without the emission of sound. Then he ran his fingers through his hair, clutched the back of his neck for a moment in impotent fury, and turned away.
Mr Kebble was watching him with his usual chubby-faced benignity, but there was speculation—puzzlement, even—in his eyes. He rolled a pencil up and down between his palms. Grail could hear it clicking against the editor’s rings. “Oh, for f...” He controlled himself, swallowed, and managed a weak smile for the joint benefit of Mr Kebble and Prile, who was about to show the editor something he had written in his notebook.
“Do we want to see any more of this stuff?” Becket asked the company at large.
There were non-committal murmurs. Several heads turned towards Grail, master of ceremonies. “Hang on a minute,” he said, and moved his chair close to Kebble’s.
“Bit odd, all this, isn’t it, old chap?” the editor said to him. “Poor Kelvin here’s just about buggered and bewildered. Tell him, Kelvin.”
The chief reporter of the Citizen turned sad and heavy-lidded eyes to Grail, then to his notes.
“I’d better go through it in order,” he said. “You remember that first scene—the bloke and the woman singing. Well, that...”
“Singing?” Grail challenged.
“Oh, yes. That’s what they were doing, actually. The sound track with those weird jabbery voices had obviously been added later. What we saw was part of a stage show. Flaxborough Amateur Operatic Society. Madame Butterfly, what else?”
God, of course—the dressing gown, a prop kimono...and that unlikely naval uniform—US Navy Lieutenant Pinkerton.
“Ages ago,” said Prile. “It was when I first came here. I’m not sure of the woman’s name, but I think it was Cannon. She was female lead for years after her voice had gone. The fellow I certainly do recognize. One of Flax’s more notorious sons. Brian Periam.”
Grail nodded impatiently, as if names now were the least of his concerns. Mr Kebble raised his brows. “Identification was what you wanted, old chap? Kelvin has quite a list. The woman we can check later.”
“Who would have made that film of the opera?” Grail asked.
“Oh, somebody in the Cine Club,” Prile replied. “They’ve compiled quite a record of local do’s over the years. That shot of the crowd outside the Oddfellows Hall was done probably in the early sixties. Operatic Society again. It used to have an annual outing.”
Birdie had joined them. “What about that dinner?” she asked.
“The Operatic,” confirmed Prile. “At the Roebuck, by the look of it. Pointer was mayor that year—the bloke who looked a bit like Hitler. Dead now.”
“One thing’s for sure, Mr Kebble,” said Birdie. “Flaxborough must be the only town in England that requires its amateur opera singers to be Khama Sutra specialists.”
Kebble chuckled with gratification. “We don’t do badly for a little place,” he said.
Behind her smile, Birdie was watching carefully the editor and Prile in turn. Both betrayed awareness of something grossly at odds with probability, something that each was content to leave for interfering London journalists to worry about.
Grail put a final question to Kebble and Prile.
“Did you notice anything about the setting of the actual sex business to indicate where it could have been staged? Anywhere round here, I mean?”
Both newspapermen looked dubious. “No idea,” said Kebble. “Could have been anywhere fairly spacious.”
“The light wasn’t much help,” Prile said.
“Nor were those sheets or curtains, or whatever they were, in the background,” added Mr Kebble. “As a matter of fact, they rather put me in mind of a studio.”
Grail’s mouth tightened. He had received exactly the same impression. And it had contributed in no small degree to his present feeling of dismay.
Chapter Ten
In furtherance of his claim to be an oculist and not an optician, Mr Barrington Hoole never opened his consulting rooms before ten o’clock in the morning. Sometimes it was nearly eleven before he arrived, but it did not matter, for latter-day prosperity enabled him to employ a receptionist sufficiently well educated to intimidate such of his clients who might object to being kept waiting. On Saturdays and Mondays, his premises remained closed altogether. Such elusiveness had so enormously increased Mr Hoole’s professional reputation, that the days when he “kept a shop”, and “sold glasses” were eclipsed.
He had ample time, therefore, to break his journey back to Chalmsbury on the Tuesday morning, in order to call upon Clive Grail and formally to tell him that his rejection of the Mayor of Flaxborough’s challenge could not be accepted as the act of a gentleman and that the preparations of the aggrieved party would proceed forthwith.
Grail heard him out with an expression of gloomy indifference, then wandered from the room after instructing the only other person present—who happened to be Mrs Lily Patmore—to “throw the pompous little lunatic into the road.”
The housekeeper looked shocked. She appealed to Mr Hoole, whom she believed to be a doctor of sorts, and therefore venerable, not to take too much notice of the gentleman. He was, she explained, not quite himself that morning, having spent the previous afternoon watching some sort of a picture show in a darkened bedroom which had upset him and little wonder.